Stents (and other medical devices) typically come in stock sizes and shapes, which may not necessarily be a good fit for every patient. Stock medical devices may not fit a patient well and, in the case of airway stents, can migrate, irritate a patient's airway, and block the flow of mucus out of their lungs. Each of these potential issues can be problematic.
Patient specific/custom fit silicone stents can be ordered by a surgeon, which may alleviate some of the issues with stock size stents. However, producing customized silicon stents can be laborious, time-intensive, and expensive. To create silicone stents, first a mold of the custom stent is created. Then, the mold is injected with liquid silicone resin. Finally, the liquid silicone resin is allowed to cure and is removed from the mold. This process may take as long as three weeks. As will be understood, this process is economically efficient for stock silicone stents, because only one mold needs to be created for each size and the molds are reusable. However, for patient specific/custom fit silicone stents, three weeks is too long of a wait time and often the molds are too expensive to justify use for a single procedure. Unfortunately, silicone cannot be 3D printed through any conventional 3D printing processes due to its inherent material properties.
As such, there is a long-felt, but unsolved need for a system and/or method of creating customizable medical devices, such as airway stents.